With CPJ Chairman Paul Steiger as moderator, the
event attracted Japanese and foreign media. We covered a broad range of topics—from
an unprecedented death toll fueled by the Maguindanao massacre in the
Philippines to the crackdown in Iran—but we eventually circled back to a
question that has come up in media interviews I’ve done here in Japan.

How are new technologies and the rise of social
media changing the press freedom landscape?

Some of the changes are well-known and well
documented—citizen journalists sending photos of street demonstrations in Iran, for
example. We also discussed the sharp increase in the jailing of online
journalists, particularly freelancers, around the world.

But new technologies are also changing the way CPJ
carries out its press freedom advocacy. This is the subject of my introduction
toAttacks on the Presswhich you can findhere.

The reality in today’s media environment is that getting your
message out is more complex and challenging. But there are new and exciting
opportunities to engage a broad section of the public by using both traditional
and new media in ways that are mutually reinforcing. That’s one reason we are doing
different targeted events to mark the publication ofAttacks on the Pressin Tokyo,
New York, Brussels,
Bogotá, Cairo, and Nairobi. We are also tweeting and blogging
about our findings.

The strategy for promoting our research is evolving, but the goal
is the same: We want to highlight the worst abusers, places such as the Philippines where journalists are killed with
impunity, and Iran,
which has launched the largest press crackdown in recent history. Through
whatever means available, our mission remains to bring these abuses to the
attention of the international public.

(Reporting from Tokyo)

Joel Simon is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. He has written widely on media issues, contributing to Slate, Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Review of Books, World Policy Journal, Asahi Shimbun, and The Times of India. He has led numerous international missions to advance press freedom. His book, The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom, will be released November 11, 2014. Follow him on Twitter @Joelcpj. His public GPG encryption key can be found here.